The Son Who Never Was

General Information

Original Title
Meine Familie und der Spion
Author/Creator
Romaniec, Rosalia, director.
Language
Polish. With dubbing in Hungarian
Subtitles
English
Published
Germany : Phann, Uwe J. ; Bilke, Manuela, 2013.
Physical Description
DVD-ROM (58 min.)
Digital ver. identifier
HU_OSA_00004703

Contents/Summary

Summary
The tragic story of a Polish man whose identity was assumed by a spy for the Polish secret service, who infiltrated West Germany's civil service, where he remained active for years. Jerzy Kaczmarek was recruited as an agent in 1977 when he was in his early twenties, and given the identity of Janusz Arnoldt. Arnoldt was the illegitimate son of a Red Army officer; he was abandoned in an orphanage at the age of one. Later adopted by a Polish family, Arnold came across his original birth certificate in the early-1980s and decided to track his birth mother down. However, when he contacted the German Red Cross for information, he was told the request had already been made years earlier, and that he and his birth mother Hildegard had been reunited long ago. An extraordinary untold chapter of Cold War espionage, this documentary reveals how secret services in the Eastern Block systematically stole the identities of orphaned and abandoned children and used them to create sophisticated aliases for their foreign agents.

Bibliographic Information

Title Translation
The Son Who Never Was
Note
Verzio Film Festival Submission
Library Special Collection
Verzio Film Festival Submission

Holdings

Item Type Current Location Call Number Status Shelving Location Public Note
DVD-ROMOSA Film LibraryFL Record 3063Available--
Digital filmOSA Film LibraryFL Record 3063
(HU_OSA_00004703.mp4)
AvailableAccess Copy, MP4 format